trumpeter is no doubt giving one of the three 'soundings' which preluded the appearance of the prologue in his traditional long black velvet cloak.[1] Nor did the flag and the trumpet exhaust the resources of the Elizabethan art of advertisement. The vexillatores of the miracle-play would perhaps have been out of keeping with London conditions.[2] But it was customary to announce after the epilogue of each performance what the next was to be.[3] And public notification was given by means of play-bills, of which we hear from as early a date as 1564, and which were set up on posts in conspicuous places up and down the city and probably also at the play-house doors.[4] Copies seem also to have been
- [Footnote: on the theatres. The Globe fire in 1613 'did not spare the silken flagg'
(cf. p. 421). Heywood, Apology, 22, mistranslates Ovid's 'Tunc neque marmoreo pendebant vela theatro' as:
In those days from the marble house did waive
No sail, no silken flag, no ensign brave.
]*
- ↑ Cf. p. 542; Cynthia's Revels, ind., where the boys struggle for the
cloak; Woman Hater, prol. 1, 'Gentlemen, Inductions are out of date,
and a Prologue in Verse, is as stale as a black Velvet Cloak, and a Bay
Garland'; Birth of Hercules (1597 <), prol. 5, 'Thepilogue is in fashion;
prologues no more'; and much later. Coronation, prol. 4,
he
That with a little Beard, a long black Cloak,
With a starch'd face, and supple leg hath spoke
Before the plays the twelvemonth.The prologue appears to be a composite figure, partly representing the poet, and deriving also in part from the presenter of dumb-shows, in part from the Chorus of neo-classic tragedy, and in part from the 'exposytour in doctorys wede', developed by miracle-plays and moralities out of the Augustine of the Prophetae; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 52, 72, 153, 417, 423, 426, 429, 448; F. A. Foster in E. S. xliv. 13; F. Lüders, Prolog und Epilog bei Shakespeare (Sh.-Jahrbuch, v. 274); Creizenach, 275. The short dramatic inductions, often introducing actors in propria persona, favoured by Jonson, Marston, and others about the beginning of the seventeenth century, attempt to give new life to a waning convention.
- ↑ Cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 141, 156. Drums and trumpets were used as advertisements in the city at any rate until 1587 (App. C, Nos. xvii, xxxi, xxxviii), and were traditional in the provinces up to the middle of the eighteenth century (Lawrence, ii. 58). Parolles tells us (All's Well, IV. iii. 298) that Captain Dumain 'has led the drum before the English tragedians'. Henslowe (i. 118) bought a drum and two trumpets for the Admiral's 'when to go into the contry' in Feb. 1600. In Histriomastix, ii. 80, 'One of them steppes on the Crosse, and cryes, A Play'.
- ↑ H. Moseley, pref. verses to F_{1} of Beaumont and Fletcher (1647):
As after th' Epilogue there comes some one
To tell spectators what shall next be shown;
So here am I.This is, of course, only Caroline evidence; for the continuance of the practice after the Restoration, cf. Lawrence, ii. 187.
- ↑ Grindal to Cecil (1564, App. D, No. xv), 'these Histriones, common playours who now daylye, butt speciallye on holydayes, sett vp bylles';
